880 
SCANDINAVIAN FISHES. 
by whalers out at sea in the Arctic Ocean. Fabricius 
states that at this time it is less rash than during the 
spawning-season, and seeks to evade its pursuers by 
leaping out of the water. In some fjords it loiters 
long after the spawning is over. This has been ob- 
served in the upper part of Varanger Fjord", and also 
in St. Mary Bay (Newfoundland), where, during the 
winter-fishery under the ice, Capelin just devoured 
have been found in the stomach of Cod taken in Janu- 
ary 6 . It attracts all the more attention during the 
spawning-season, when it gathers in immense shoals 
and repairs to shallow water. This takes place gene- 
rally late in winter and early in summer, off Norwe- 
gian Finmark, according to Sars, in April, May, and 
June, on the coast of Greenland, according to Fabri- 
cius, in May, June, and July. But this rule is subject 
to many irregularities, which are of importance not 
only for the fishery, but also to shed light upon similar 
variations in the appearance of the Herring. For se- 
veral years, seemingly at periodic intervals, the Capelin 
deserts its usual spawning-places; in other years it 
comes at an unusual season, seemingly, as in the case 
of the Herring, earlier at the beginning of a period. 
Thus Sheriff Sommerfelt (1799) writes of the Capelin", 
“that else they have the experience here that it has 
abandoned the coasts of Finmark for many years, up 
to 16 or 20, in succession”; and to the quintennial 
reports of the sheriff (1830 — 1840), according to which 
the ‘Capelin-fishery’ (i. e. the Cod-fishery with a bait 
of Capelin) had not been practised on the coast of 
Finmark, Juel appends the remark d : “As old fisher- 
men state, however, the Capelin did appear off the 
coast in one of these periods of five years, but came 
early (in December) and departed in March, so that 
no fisherman seized the opportunity. Subsequently the 
Capelin came later and later in the year.” Similar 
irregularities meet us in the Herring’s approach to the 
coast. They very probably depend in an eminent 
degree, as Sars assumed, on variations in the “physio- 
meteorological conditions,” perhaps too on variations in 
the supply of food and in the numbers of the Capelin’s 
enemies. But as yet we can only record them among 
the lessons of experience; their explanation we must 
leave to future research. How important it would be 
to Norway to ascertain the causes of these irregula- 
rities, we may easily gather from the results of the 
so-called Capelin-fishery, which depend on the said 
irregularities, and which in 1875, according to Sars, 
were estimated at nearly twenty million Cod, but in 
some of the preceding and the following years at only 
five or six million. 
During its wanderings the shoal is incessantly 
harassed by all kinds of enemies in search of food. 
In their efforts to escape the Capelins crowd so close 
together that the fish in the middle of the shoal are 
even lifted above the surface, where they wildly lash 
about on the backs of those beneath them. When the 
weather is calm, the Capelin shoal looks like a tum- 
bling, glittering wave on the surface. Above it hover 
flocks of kittiwakes ( Larus tridactylus), which time 
after time swoop down and seize a fish; and round the 
shoal blow whales (the common rorqual, Baleen op ter a 
musculus, and the lesser rorqual, Balcenoptera rostrated). 
But the Capelin’s most eager pursuers are Cod and 
Coaltish'. Meanwhile the shoal makes for the coast, 
which it follows till it finds a suitable spawning-place. 
Often enough it comes so near land that the fish may 
be scooped up in a hand-net from the beach, or even 
leap ashore to escape their pursuers. As a rule they 
swim against the wind, a sea-wind keeping them from 
the coast, and a land-breeze alluring them thither. 
Enormous are the numbers in which the Capelin ap- 
pears during these migrations, and many are the ac- 
counts thereof. Thus Collett states that the Capelins 
often spread in shoals many miles long, touching the 
coast almost simultaneously at the extreme end of 
Western Finmark and in Varanger Fjord. “The females 
go first in a separate shoal,” writes Fabricius, “and seek 
out places suitable for their progeny; the males follow and 
seek out the eggs, to impregnate them with their miltb 
a Sars, Loddejisket, ved Finmdrken, Indber. Depart, f. d. Indre, 1879, p. 11. 
* Hind in Bean, 1. c. 
c The quotation is taken from Juel, 1. c., p. 9. 
d L. c., p. 11. 
e These two according to Sars. According to Collett the Capelin is also eaten by the humpbacked whale ( Megaptera boops). 
f Besides these, according to Collett, Anarrhichas minor and lupus, Hippoglossus vulgaris, and several more. 
g According to Atwood (Proc. Bost. Soc. XIV (1872), p. 134) the males lead the way, and the females follow them to the spawning- 
place, but in comparatively small numbers, one female to ten males. 
